The practice of surgery / by James Gregory Mumford ... with 682 illustrations.

  • James Gregory Mumford
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The practice of surgery / by James Gregory Mumford ... with 682 illustrations. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

    12/1044 (page 8)
    text-books on Medical Practice have learned something of this. They no longer fill their pages with elaborate essays on theory as well as on practice. In this book, accordingly, I give to the reader an account of the prac- tice of surgery—of surgery as he will see it at the bedside, in the accident ward, and in the operating-room. The writing is elaborated from many years of active hospital and private surgical practice, from clinical teachings, from class-room discussions, and lectures. With proper modesty may I hope that the student will find here a com])rc- hensive description of all such general surgical ailments as may fall to him for treatment and advice. Moreover, the reader will find the plan of this book somewhat un- conventional in other respects. I puipose taking up surgical diseases in their order of interest, importance, and frec|uency, so far as one may with due regard to a proper sequence; and I endeavor also to lay stress on those subjects which nature herself has accentuated. By such a plan one should be able to present the various subjects in their true perspective. Appendicitis concerns us far more than does inflammation of Meckel's diverticulum; meningitis, than cirsoid aneurysm; and felon, than Dupuytren's contraction. The student should leani to look for, to recognize, and to treat the common and grave ailments which practice furnishes. Curiosities of surgery should be known, but their infrequency will limit their familiar study by the average practitioner. For this reason their exhaustive exposition must be left to writers of especial monographs. Frequently one finds essayists complaining that their own immediate topics are slighted by the writers of text-books. In the nature of text-book composition such slighting is inevitable. A text- l)ook of surgery cannot be an encyclopedic treatise on all surgical knowledge. In this book, therefore, I assume the reader's preliminary training, and endeavor to present to him the Practice of Surgery as surgeons see it—as a subject of unending variety and importance, as a pursuit of the deepest human interest. I thank cordially my friends who have assisted me by their criticism in the final revision of the manuscript: Dr. Malcolm Storer, Dr. Thomas F. Harrington, Dr. E. W. Taylor, Dr. R. B. Greenough, Dr. Lincoln Davis, Dr. Samuel Robinson, and Dr. John B. Hartwell. The original illustrations are by Miss Ruth O. Huestis, an indefatig- able artist. J. G. M. 29 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, Mass., September, 1910.